I had breakfast early and [6] spent the rest of the time making a mental list of what I would have the children do once they arrive…
“Brother, we’re here~”
“Ou, welcome-? Hey, aren’t there a lot more of you today?” [5]
“Well, the thing is… when I brought those two chunks of meat home, the kids saw them and were all super excited…” [5]
[6] “… I supposed you also told them about your food and the job offer?” I sighed.
[6] “Yeah…”
Well, I can’t blame him for wanting to share the good news with his little friends. [5] 1 silver coin per person is a very attractive offer if they usually see a few bronze coins now and then.
“I guess that explains the number of people you brought here. Well, I guess there’s no harm having more manpower to tackle that labour intensive job.”
[8] “Yeah, everyone who didn’t have a chore back at the orphanage wanted to come,” [5] he said. “Especially the ones who are really interested in food and cooking.”
“Ah, so they want the secret to the offal cleaning technique,” I nodded to myself.
[8] “Eh? Ah, now that you mention it, that’s probably true.” Lewis grinned, “I was telling everyone about how you make those soft disgusting guts delicious and they immediately swarmed me.” [5]
Hmm, looks like these aspiring chefs are pretty clever. Offal drops are considered a ‘miss’ by most Adventurers. If you could specialise in making cheap unwanted meats like these delicious, you could open a stall and stand out among other stalls.
Thus far, most people did not have a good opinion of offal, but if they could learn the secret of making such ‘bad’ meat delicious, they could make a lot of money.
[8] “Um, but is it alright to show them how to make these bad meats delicious? I heard that recipes and marinades are kind of top-secret among chefs.”
“You’re right. If I were planning to open a stall or restaurant here, I’d never reveal my secrets. However, I don’t plan to stay here long, so I’m fine teaching it to you guys. It’s a good thing to spread the knowledge of delicious food.”
“I see, that’s great, big brother! Thank you for teaching us!”
“Well, so long as you do your job properly… by the way, I’ve been wondering over this for a while. Why are these little kids here?”
The little kids in question were really small children about 5 years old or less. [1] There were about 6 of them. There was a boy with rabbit ears, a pair of girls with dog and cat ears, and three human children (two boys, one girl).
None of the six little kids looked like they knew what was going on and were happy to just be out of the orphanage and explore the world with their older brothers and sisters.
“Ah, them, I didn’t want to bring them, but they started crying and, well…” [5]
“I guess it can’t be helped,” I said, seeing the smiles on these little kids.
“I’m really sorry for the trouble, big brother,”
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“Oi, you want me to look after these little brats?”
“Oh no, not just you, Fer. I’m asking Sui and Dora-chan too.”
““Hey, I’m not good with shrimps,”” snapped Dora-chan.
““Sui will play with everyone~”” announced Sui as she bounced over to the six little kids.
[6] She split into several Suis and bounced among them, making the little kids giggle.
Suddenly, one of the human girl, Flora, rushed to Fer and clung to him, “Wolfie-shann~~”
“No fair, me tchoo~” a beast girl with cat ears, Debbie, also threw herself at Fer.
The next thing I knew, the rest of the little kids all rushed over to Fer and clung to him.
“Wow, a wolfie~”
“Me too, let me hugg~”
“O-oi, you little insects. Begone!”
It was quite funny to see Fer struggling to gently extricate the sticky kids.
“Since the weather is so nice, [8] it’s a perfect day to work on the offal outside. We’ll be working near the kitchen so you guys can stay on this side of the garden and take care of the children, alright?”
“W-Wait a minute!”
“[5] Sui and Dora-chan, make sure nobody gets hurt, okay? I’ll make something great for dinner.”
““Tch, fine, I guess…””
““Yay~ Sui will do her best~~””
“I will remember this, masterrrr!!”
Fer seemed to be saying something, but I can’t hear him. I can’t hear anything.
“O-oi, big brother. Is it really alright to leave them like this?”
Lewis was understandably concerned but, “It’s fine. Rather, you had better worry about yourself. I want to process all the offal by today. [6] That includes the heart, liver and other innards!”
[9]
“Wait, seriously? You want to eat those things too?!”
“Fufufu, you just wait.”
Just as I had threate- I mean, promised, we continued to process the rest of the offal. The ones who had experience working on the intestines yesterday formed into groups with the newbies. The large intestines took the most work to clean so we worked on those first, followed by the small intestines.
Next, we worked on the liver, heart and stomachs of beef and pork.
The liver did not need much processing. Just knead it gently with salt and vinegar and set aside to rest for 10 to 15 minutes before rinsing until the water runs clear. Another way to clean the liver was to soak it in milk, but milk could sometimes be difficult to obtain, so I showed the orphans the salt and vinegar way.
For the heart, first, slice the heart across the grain starting from the bottom part of the heart then wash the pieces in salty water to remove any blood clots. Once the heart pieces were clean, expose them to cold water once more.
The honeycomb tripe or reticulum (also the 2nd or 3rd stomach) would be the next most troublesome offal to handle after the large intestines. It should first be rubbed with salt and then scraped with a sharp knife to remove any impurities. Next, instead of water, use vinegar to rinse off the salt. Finally, boil a pot of water with a tablespoon of salt. Once the water starts boiling, boil the tripe for about 15 minutes. After removing the tripe from the boiling water, plunge it into cold water and rinse one final time.
[9]
It was all work that require patience and careful labour. If we skip any of these steps, the offal would be stinky and won’t taste good.
Anyway, the children were all pretty good sports. Even though they complained a lot, everyone worked quite well.
The ones working the hardest were the children who aspire to be chefs.
“I see, so this is how we can get rid of the bad smells…” was heard now and then.
They also came up to me and asked many questions.
I tried my best to answer their questions as much as I could and the work went on steadily for the rest of the day…
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Finally, everything was done.
“Alright everyone, it’s over now. Thank you for your hard work.”
There was a hearty cheer at that.
Thanks to the extra people we have today, the work to process and clean the offal went much quicker than I expected.
“As promised, I will provide lunch for everyone. Since there are so many of us, let’s eat in the garden.”
At this, the children cheered again.
We went to the side where Fer was babysitting the little kids.
Oh my, Fer was flat on his side, exhausted. The children and Sui tucked close to him, soundly sleeping.
“Master, you’ve finally come…”
“Ah, good job, Fer,”
“Please do something about the children, they keep pulling on my fur and climbing on me. I swear, they are worse than dealing with monsters…”
Ah…. I see the fearless little kids doing whatever they wanted to Fer. My condolences.
But thanks to Fer’s sacrifice, I saved a lot of trouble. I told Lewis and the others to wake up the younger ones who were still sleeping on Fer. The little kids looked a little disappointed and were clearly reluctant to leave Fer, but as soon as I talked about the food they opened their eyes wide and cheered.
“Phew, I’m safe…”
“Thank you for your hard work. I’m going to make something to eat now, it’s deep-fried food that you like so cheer up”
“Umu, I can’t keep up with all of this if I don’t eat something delicious.”
Right, deep-fried food for everyone! Kids especially love deep-fried food and I have a lot of Cockatrice meat that I had gotten from the dungeon yesterday. Orthodox style deep-fried food with soy sauce as well as the shiokara-style. Both proved to be popular with the children. Fer, Dora-chan and Sui were also eating quite well.
“How’s the deep-fried food?”
When I asked the children, they replied with nods since their mouths were full.
“There’s still a lot more of it, so eat slowly.”
Even after I said that they kept stuffing more into their mouths.
“Oh, I forgot about something, big brother! This is for you!”
Lewis took out a paper from his pocket while still chewing.
“What is it?”
“I received it from the director. He told me to give it to you.”
The paper turned out to be a thank you letter from the director. The polite and grateful tone of the letter made me feel a bit uneasy. All I did was give the children a bit of meat…
The director also mentioned that he was sorry for not being able to meet me in person. It seems like an orphanage assistant who had been helping out had quit recently, and he was left with only two sisters managing the orphanage.
According to Lewis, there are about 60 children and some of them were still infants, so it must be really difficult for them. While I’m here, I wonder if I could do some sort of donation. I had never been the type to give donations since I never know whether my money would reach the intended victims, but I guess it should be alright this time?
“Ahhh, that was delicious”
“Really good!”
“I can’t eat anymore…”
The children rubbed their bellies in satisfaction. Looks like deep-fried food is an excellent bet after all, and I was right to make plenty of it.
“Master, I would like you to teach me how to make this ‘deep-fried food’, but before that could you show me how to cook the offal?”
Master? I’m not exactly your master.
“That’s right, Master. Please, teach us how to make this into delicious food!”
The two kids who kept calling me master were Maynard and Enzo, they had been enthusiastically asking me questions all day. They were the ones keen to become professional chefs.
“Please, Master!”
“Master, please!”
Maynard and Enzo stuck closer with their eyes wide open.
“Ahh, yes, yes, but not today. It’s already late. Later, I’ll teach you later.”
“Later when?”
“Uh? Tomorrow?”
“Please let us know the time!”
I really don’t know what to do with these two very enthusiastic boys.
“Ah, ahh, tomorrow morning. Come about the same time as today!” [3] I was defeated by their enthusiasm.
Maynard and Enzo grinned, “We’ll see you tomorrow morning!”
Just how did things turn out this way?
I guess it’s fine, anyway, after paying the kids a silver coin each, everyone went back home happy.
[Gumihou: The ending is a bit abrupt…]
[1] Structural Change: Combine 2 paragraphs
[2] Structural Change: Combine 3 paragraphs
[3] Structural Change: Combine paragraph & dialogue
[4] Structural Change: Change passive sentence to dialogue
[5] Delete Repetitive or Pointless Information
[6] Additional Information for Aesthetic Purpose
[7] Add Dialogue Tag
[8] Creative Licence Taken – Make Lewis’ dialogue more in character and age-appropriate. As in, not a dumb kid but not an eloquent adult either. Deleted a lot of leading questions that basically just make Lewis look dumb for unnecessary exposition. Please don’t pull a Shiyu here.
[9] Offal processing logistics and method
Tripe cleaning